I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but threads or comments about Lemmy or the Fediverse get downvoted a lot on Reddit and trolls who claim that it’s “dogshit” and “not going anywhere” get systematically upvoted.
Some of those trolls get then exposed when you ask them what Lemmy instance they tried and one of them with whom I had a surreal exchange answered with something like “yeah ofc I used Lemmy, this is the instance: join-lemmy.org” 🤦♂️
It’s frustrating that these trolls keep contributing to the big lie that “Lemmy is not ready yet” and that there’s “no viable alternative to Reddit”.
This and the overwhelming number of comments being “against the mod protests” just prompts me to question whether there isn’t some brigading being organized straight from the Reddit HQ.
Probably bots. Reddit has been using them for some time, but recently got caught using chat gpt or something similar to argue against the blackouts.
Which is fking insane since one of Steve’s excuses for upping API pricing so high is to fight LLM from training on “their” dataset! Fucking LOL
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The majority aren‘t bots. Most of them are legit no lifers to whom Reddit going down the drain would be a huge blow. I mean you work full time as a cashier for taco bell and you are not really happy with that situation. Some people go to school again, learn a skill… others spend all their time one Reddit stockpiling karma. Those are the people who really hate lemmy and anything that could remotely make Reddit worse, because they are heavily invested in the platform for the wrong reasons.
It really feels like that is happening in /r/lotrmemes – https://www.reddit.com/r/lotrmemes/comments/14cekxa/shall_we_continue_the_blackout_poll_round_2/
Do you have a source for this claim? I’m very interested in reading about it
that is pretty conclusive
That’s pathetic lmao.
It’s too tiring going back and forth with these types of Reddit users. I gave up and just chill here
Years ago reddit put aside a cardinal rule of the internet: Don’t feed the trolls.
It was worse off for it from a user perspective. It’s been great for investors though.
Lemmy isn’t ready yet to completely replace Reddit for most people, and that’s part of the fun!!
We are pretty of the first migration, one the land is settled more will come
The thing is, there are pretty much two distinctly separate reddits, new and old. New reddit is flashy with live videos and more media than text, and old is very text based. And then if you are using an app like RIF, you don’t even have chat. For me, old reddit is very much like browser lemmy and going from RIF to Jerboa was very seemless. It’s almost the same thing. But if someone actually likes new reddit and their app(I saw a graph that like 80% of users use it) lemmy is not going to cut it.
But imo lemmy is in a great spot right now. It could definitely be better but it’s growing a lot. I’m liking it at least.
Here’s the thing - we’ve been raised from birth to think “people don’t make things, companies do”.
Most people have never used software that isn’t company branded, they’ve never sat in a chair made by someone they know, they’ve never pulled food out of the ground. Almost all jobs set someone up doing a service with a supply chain behind them or doing one small step of something bigger.
It’s learned helplessness. They don’t have the concept of how they could do things outside of the hierarchy - solid chance they’ve tried, and since their skills are hyper-specialized and rely on big, expensive tools, they found they had a lot of gaps.
Anything you do outside of a company is a hobby to most people. And even then, people organize into sports leagues and buy fancy toys instead of just meeting up in the park with a ball… Do you really need to play by professional rulesets when you’re just trying to exercise?
This time around, I didn’t bother to explain why the decentralization is so important to my friends and family - even the technical ones are almost afraid of the idea of it.
Instead, I told them about the ways Reddit has picked up the harmful strategy that Facebook used, and that makes mobile gaming so addicting yet so unfulfilling: show them less of the content they want to change the reward schedule, training you to use the app longer for a smaller dopamine hit. Show you content that will make you feel angry, driving up engagement. And most importantly, always wave the promise of another dopamine hit.
The app is eggregious - it sprinkles in stuff from top communities I left a long time ago because they suck, it gives you suggestions for new communities and presents them like interaction from other users, and it sends you notifications to tempt you back in all the time.
And this is just the beginning, it’s going to get a lot worse With all the other social networks eyeing their own strategies to squeeze their users, it’s going to suck across the board, and good luck trying to build relationships outside these platforms
I think it’s important to remember we’re animals, and we’re not just trainable, we’re the most trainable by a large margin. The best of us have just a handful of moments where we see beyond our instincts and conditioning, and decide to train ourselves
This project is important, because it can give us back communities small enough to get to know each other, while providing a larger forum for ideas, and with a design that can shrug off attempts to control it.
It’s going to fragment. Sections of it will break off into echo chambers, admins will sell out their users, and parts will offer a curated walked garden hosted. But it can survive all that because of one simple truth - unless one person captures the majority of the network, they’re going to have to cut off the best part of the network. Social media can be profitable without sucking, but to rake in profits it has to suck - and even then, we can start up servers for friends and family, and rebuild the network organically
I’m working for an app streamlined enough I can send it to my mom and have her sign up without getting scared off, and I think I’ve got a solid idea of how to improve discovery of communities without becoming distributed rather than decentralized. Other people are building their own visions of what this can become, and a lot of people are writing impressive code (Lemmy has no business scaling as well as it has), and the beauty of it is that it all competes while adding to the whole.
I’ve been at it for 30 hours now, but I can’t shake the feeling that me getting this out this out in the next few days is going to matter if this is going to become what I hope instead of another shard of Reddit.
But every time I step away to take a breather, I end up back on here and see a glimpse of what this could be
The only way to change the world is to release something self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing and intrinsically positive, and hope it grows
Little pockets of culture can exist in the cracks of society. Kudos to all involved. I’m not sure I can meaningfully contribute as of yet due to family/time constraints but I’m here to comment and upvote.
Is there a Lemmy c/bestof somewhere yet?
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That’s very exciting to read. Thank you for your service.
I reckon it’s mostly bots set up by Reddit admins and sad-sack mods who consider Reddit moderation to be a full-time job
There’s definitely corpo sockpuppets and bots involved, some of which have even straight up posted AI bot warnings about not being able to generate offensive content (oops!) but there’s plenty of ignorant people too.
That said, I’m kind of OK with them staying on reddit because people like that had been making reddit progressively worse for years and years at it gained popularity. Hopefully the relative obscurity of Lemmy will prevent that from happening for a while yet.
Neoliberals and saying “there is no alternative”, name a more iconic duo
The wheel of history will succumb redditors who refuse to accept that their system will pass just as all other before it have.
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Spam-bots and strange links.
what does that have to with neoliberals lol
Probably a lot. They love bootlicking
Let them stay there then. We can’t force people to join us here. If they choose to believe those kind of brigading comments then they do not have the level of critical thinking to become a meaningful contributor to any site. Those who wanted to move have already moved. Those remaining there are those who chose to ignore the issue, or support reddit.
Of course there’s no viable alternatives to Reddit. Why would someone create another dumpster fire?
Lol best comment right here. We don’t want to be Reddit we want to be our own thing.
If they want to gate-keep themselves then fine by me.
I legit joined this instance yesterday because I’m not going to trust the claims of randos (who are now very easy to see as frauds) and although I agree that Lemmy needs some work, it’s responsive and reasonably usable. I’m impressed at how well it’s handling the massive Reddit migration.
It’s sort of an asshole problem. All the cool people are walking away from Reddit, or at the very least trying to support the blackout/boycott. So all that’s left are the chronically online people, apathetic lurkers, and assholes who purposefully don’t care. The assholes are now seeming more vocal because all the logical voices are burned out or gone. Provided the good contributors/commenters stay away. Eventually lurkers won’t enjoy a ton of pissy comments on everything and look for more interesting discussion to peruse. Then the assholes will just be being assholes to each other, then be like man this place is full of assholes, and go look for a healthier community to be an asshole too because they don’t want people who fight back like they do lol.
Hey hey hey. I’m chronically online. That’s why I care enough to be here instead of Reddit!
As a tech savy person, I can confidently say lemmy is not a viable reddit alternative at this stage for an arbitrary reddit user. The UI and clients are just terrible and full of small bugs, annoyances and inconsistencies. Sure, it will eventually get there, but negative opinions about lemmy are not completely unmerrited. Just as I’m typing this, I get screen tears and flickering elements. It’s just very, very bleeding edge and I can absolutely see how someone trying it for 5 minutes would be turned off. If you want to capture the masses, the user experience has to impeccable.
PS: my first try at submitting this response timed out. This is my second try.
you only need to move the more techie knowledgeable user base here. The ones that mod and post content.
The average user provides nothing to the site but dead traffic. They’ll come when the content is here.
The content creators want their content to be seen by as many people as possible. It’s not “dead” traffic, they are valuable consumers even if all they do is lurk. A content creator is obviously more valuable than a lurker, but we should not ignore the other side.
Thing is; I don’t want the “arbitrary reddit user”. I want the low-effort user to get irritated and leave.
That would likely also err content creators to leave, just because fewer people would be available to see the posts.
There certainly can (and should) be places that your typical user doesn’t want to go to, but if there’s nowhere for them to go then it will cause a hard stop on fediverse adoption.
Plus, it’s not like many of these issues wouldn’t affect non-arbitrary users. just they’re willing to put up with it. And that’s not a sign of a good site.
It doesn’t have to be impeccable. It doesn’t need corporations to buy ads. It just has to keep getting better and not die. Look at Linux. It never did overtake MacOS & Windows on desktops. But it keeps getting better and it didn’t die and it took over server rooms. Look at Mastodon. It’s nowhere near as popular as Twitter and maybe never will be, but it’s 5 years old and is steadily growing. I like hanging out there. Oak trees start as acorns.
That’s the thing though, criticism of lemmy does not necessarily mean hate. We can acknowledge and be honest about the problems without shitting on the platform. My experience over the last week with kbin would have been way beyond the technical know-how of say, my sister. It’s ready for the average user. It will be, devs are kicking ass, but we’re not there yet and that’s okay. I would rather people know what they’re in for here than to show up expecting a polished, bug-free interface.
Here’s an example: how can I subscribe to the topics I want to follow? I don’t want to see the 198 or whatever it is posts. Nor programmer humour. Lemmy has a great community of fans and users but if I can’t see only what I want I’m not going to use it.
“Oh no … my very new free software that’s not selling my data and run by VC overlords has some bugs”
I know I’m being an asshole there, but this is about more than usability, it’s about values and speaking with your feet. Not that your comments about usability and bugs don’t matter … they do! My issue is that it is way too normal to put convenience and usability front, center and above everything else.
So many conversations with intelligent people about things like this end with “but is it as convenient!?” If that’s all we care about, then we don’t really deserve anything better. In the mean time, we can try to adjust what we and others care about.
I could really care less if it’s a part of something “good”. I just want somewhere to kick back and relax, maybe learn something or gain a new perspective. For that purpose convenience is king. In any case the better the product the more others will use federated alternatives and better/more diverse the content would be. And yeah, I already threw money at the devs to show my appreciation for what’s been built so far.
I mean, I’m willing to subscribe to a Reddit service, too, if their in-house app wasn’t hot shit.
I definitely get where you’re coming from and at least you’re giving alternatives a shot. Don’t abandon Reddit just yet, just use both even if that means Reddit is still your main.
Unfortunately no one can compete with the big tech companies anymore both in scale and user experience. The most you can hope for is to keep alternatives afloat as a solid secondary option and hope they gradually improve. If only tech savvy people hang out here then a lot of the UI jank will go uncontested and unnoticed.
Couldn’t.
If you COULD care less, then you still care to some degree because there is a level of caring you COULD go down to.
If you COULDN’T care less, then you are literally already at the lowest level of caring and could not possibly go lower.
If you are not subscribing to anything, then the only two “walls” you can see is “local” and “all”. “Local” showing posts from communities on your Lemmy server and “all” showing posts from every known Lemmy server.
My two cents: good! Let the shitty people stay on reddit. I’m loving the respectful communities here on lemmy, and don’t really want those clowns coming over and messing it up for us.
The comments/replies to my comments that really chapped my ass were when someone was defending ads and trying to claim they didn’t even know there were third party apps and we were just being babies. I don’t want to have to watch two unskippable ads like YouTube just to see a meme or comment in an AskReddit or be bombarded with gas pill ads between every front page post because I typed “why am I farting more than normal?” In a toolbar five years ago, and I’m not being a baby because I don’t want to give up my working product for a shit alternative that turns me into a product. I feel like Reddit is Pied Piper from ‘Silicon Valley’ where they hired a shit load of trolls in an office in New Delhi to gaslight us and drive up support for a highly disliked business path.
Unfortunately there’s probably a large amount of users who simply don’t care.
But that’s okay. What matters is content creators, not content consumers. Anyone with half a gram of decency and self integrity will have realized that they need to take steps to move away from Reddit.
When the content creators leave and go to Lemmy/Kbin, eventually those content consumers will leave and go with them too. Will be a bonus for the Fediverse
Dumb question… Sorry, what’s kbin? I’ve seen it mentioned together to Lemmy, but it’s all rather new to me.
